Land scape Special Edition CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Donna Bassin: The death of my younger sister when I was ten years old, my parents’ grief, my experience as mental health support to first responders and victims' families following 9/11, and my community work with war-torn veterans shaped my clinical and art practice. The many losses and disruptions in my life have given me access to the vulnerability and pain of others, strengthening muscles of compassion and pressing me to create work that contributes even slightly to the repair of our world. I am unearthing the power of grief as an energizer for change. The knowledge that traumatic grief and suffering can be transformed into personal and social change is a thread that runs deep in both my practices as motive and substance. Both my “practices” impact and inform the other. This has resulted in a series of long-term projects responding to the injurious aspects of contemporary life, such as psychic wounds after the war, racial inequality, the crisis of democracy, and, most recently, the destruction of our environment. I have written and published in various psychoanalytic, art, and culture periodicals, directed and produced two feature-length documentaries, created solo exhibits and public installations and participated with other similarly minded artists in curated group shows. Art making - as a form of emotionally rich slow thinking and research has kept me relatively resilient and provided a safe container for my own emotions of grief and despair. For this special edition of LandEscape we have selectedEnvironmental Melancholia, a stimulating series — that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article — that has at once captured our attention for the way it invites the viewers to go beyond aesthetics and explore the interconnectedness of place,